Finn Lobsien’s User’s Manual

Too many work conversations focus on what: What are your skills? What have you done? What will you do next? What matters, How is undervalued. A team of motivated, skilled people with the same goals can drive each other crazy when they disagree on how. 

This document outlines how I like to work.

By reading this document, you’ll get an impression of me and how I work. If you’re considering hiring me, this will give you an impression of if I fit into the culture:

Overview

  • Finn Lobsien
  • Born in Germany, lived in U.S., Portugal, Spain
  • 5-2-8-5 Kolbe A index
  • Gallup Strenghts Finder themes:
    • Futuristic
    • Strategic
    • Significance
    • Focus
    • Command

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

I love figuring things out and creating breakthroughs.

  • Fast learner: I love learning. Unknown tools and skills aren’t obstacles; they’re signposts.
  • Creative: I love considering far-off possibilities and options that fly in the face of convention.
  • Systems and Operations: “We don’t rise to the level of our Slack pings, we fall to the level of our documentation”. Much work stress comes from bad organization. I love processes, dashboards and documentation.
  • Teaching: I love watching others grow by teaching and coaching on skills I have.
  • Going from zero to one: I love bringing order to chaos and working at the intersection of my various skills.
  • Coloring outside the lines: I serve and organization, not a role. If I believe something could be better, I point it out and propose a solution—whether or not that’s my responsibility.
  • High standards: I believe in delivering high-quality work and helping others produce high-quality work.
  • Vision: I find it easy to see the long-term future of a project or company.
  • Taking ownership: I believe in “Extreme ownership”, taking responsibility for the outcome of everything I was involved in.

Weaknesses

  • Distration: I’m excitable, which can lead me astray from my focus.
  • Overwhelm: I say yes to too much. This can overwhelm me and stress me out.
  • Boredom: I get bored once I’ve figured something out. I feel bored if I’m going through the motions.
  • Fear of disappointing: I hate disappointing people, even when necessary. This can lead to me saying yes to the wrong things or suppressing opinions.
  • Perfectionism: Because I have high standards, perfect can become the enemy of good.
  • Head in the clouds: I thrive in the abstract and conceptual and can forget to turn those into tangible actions.
  • Asking for help: I love figuring things out, so I tend to do things myself, even when asking someone else would be easier.

How I like to work

This section explains how I like and dislike to work. Some of these are controversial, others personal preference.

  • Minimize meetings: My meeting philosophy is based on Paul Graham: Makers need long, uninterrupted blocks of time. Some meetings are necessary: Creative brainstorms multiply ideas and you can’t make important decisions in a vacuum.
  • Work is 80/20: Results are pareto-distributed: A minority of efforts create a majority of the results.
  • In the absence of systems, chaos takes over: Many organizations work as a hyperactive hive mind. Lack of responsibilities, processes and systems create worse outcomes in more time. I believe in building systems that make results replicable and speed up work.
  • Long, focused work: Makers (designers, writers, engineers etc.) need long, uninterrupted work blocks and relative freedom over our calendars.
  • ‘Busy’ is not a badge of honor: Being active does not mean you’re making an impact. It is far more worthwhile to spend fewer in-depth hours on what matters than to be busy all day with inconsequential meetings and back-and-forth messages.

Advice to people I work with

Whether you’re my manager or my peer, here’s what I’d advise you to do:

  • Call me out on my bullshit: I can be eloquent and persuasive. This doesn’t always mean I’m right. Always question me and call me out. I value intellectual honesty.
  • Be direct: Don’t sugarcoat things—I like directness and honesty.
  • Ask me why: If I’m working on something, no matter how good my pitch, ask me why I’m doing so and how that relates to the goal I’m pursuing
  • High standards: I love challenges and feedback (especially if it’s tough, but honest). If you think I can do better, tell me.
  • Give me clear, ambitious goals and metrics: If I feel my work makes no impact, I get demotivated. I love seeing the measurable results I help create.

How I manage

When I’m in charge of a team, here’s how I manage:

  • Ownership: Everything that happens on my team is my responsibility.
  • Praise in public, criticize in private: Public shaming increases compliance and stirs resentment. Constructive criticism must happen in private. Public praise shows teammates they work with great people and gives them something to aspire to.
  • Directing, not acting:I trust that whoever is on the team is good at what they do. Micro-management is rooted in distrust. I give directional input (what we want to achieve) and trust their expertise.
  • Operations: I create systems and processes to minimize meetings and create space for everyone to do good work.
  • Goals: Teams should work for goals, not for their manager. Clear, falsifiable goals ensure there’s an objective standard.

How to realize I’m not doing well

If I’m stressed, overwhelmed or otherwise not doing well at work, you’ll see the following:

  • I shut down: I love conversations, debates and asking questions. If I stop contributing, asking and probing, something’s wrong.
  • I stop innovating: I love to innovate both big and small. If I stop improving things and do as I’m told, something’s wrong.

Fun stuff!

After all the serious stuff, let’s get to the more exciting stuff!

Things I love

  • Chess: Rated 1700-1800 in rapid.
  • Reading: Both fiction and non-fiction. If I was rich and never had to work again, I’d read and write all day.
  • Rock Climbing: I love figuring things out. Rock climbing is a puzzle you solve with your body! That’s me!
  • Writing: If I publish it or not, I’m always writing something.
  • Good conversation: I love figuring people out and having good conversations, seeing how our two personalities match (or don’t).
  • Hiking: Nothing makes me feel as serene and blissful as the mountains. Here’s a pic from a recent hike:

A few books I love:

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being: An exploration of how finitude of life and relationships makes them both infinitely meaningful and inherently fleeting.
  • The Drama of the Gifted Child: How unique talents and sensitivities can hurt us—and how to unshackle our inner lives from it.
  • The 4-hour Work Week: I don’t believe in only working 4 hours per week. At its core, the book is about 80/20 optimization: Only do the things which make an impact.
  • Deep Work: Your best work happens when you have long focus blocks, not when you’re triaging Slack pings.
  • 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: Living to the age of 80 is only about 4000 weeks. Life is short. Spend it well.
  • The Art of Loving: Love is not merely for romantic relationships, but a way of being that is generous and caring.
  • Antifragile: Not everything gets worse with damage and stress. Many systems improve.
  • Breakthrough Advertising: The best book on copywriting and marketing ever written. Dense and advanced, but there’s no better illustration of the principles of marketing.
  • Alchemy: Rory Sutherland explains how the opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea.

A few quotes I love

That which hinders your task, is your task.

-Sanford Meisner

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

-Seneca

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.

And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend.

Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.

Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between parents and children; it uses up much of the children’s strength and wastes the love of the elders, which acts and warms even if it doesn’t comprehend. Don’t ask for any advice from them and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke